Grammy Awards post-mortem: Not bad (see story, page 26). The Dixie Chicks won a lot, which is cool. The Red Hot Chili Peppers won; they’re always great. Although they unfortunately weren’t there, it was funny that Bob Dylan won contemporary folk album and Bruce Springsteen won traditional folk album.
I don’t know, maybe it was because I was working while it was on, but nothing bugged me too much—which may be a first in Grammy history. Not a lot of rock’n’roll, but I got used to that 10 years ago. There seemed to be more great performances than usual—mostly by artists I know nothing about, so it was one revelation after another for me.
Mary J. Blige stopped the show with Jerry Ragovoy’s “Stay With Me,” the showstopper Bette Midler did so amazingly in “The Rose.”
And when it comes to the pop world I am not really sure who’s who, but they told me the next morning in the “Sopranos” makeup trailer that it was Christina Aguilera who did “It’s a Man’s World” in the James Brown tribute, and she was fantastic. I mean, like, the Real Thing fantastic. And though I don’t know if we needed four songs from him, even Justin Timberlake’s first song was great. Not good—great.
I know how ignorant I am about contemporary pop, and any pop people reading this will think it’s funny that I just discovered that Aguilera, Timberlake and Blige are great. But where would I have heard them?
The magic moment came at the end of the Brown tribute. Danny Ray, Brown’s MC for 30 years, laid the cape on a mic stand lit by a pin spot framed by Brown’s frozen face on video above. A genius moment in a shockingly good show.
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